ARMAS

The Automated Radiation Measurements for Aerospace Safety (ARMAS) project uses an innovative approach with a low-cost dosimeter sensor to enhance Earth science research and improve aerospace safety. The ARMAS team has deployed and obtained data from dosimeters flown on commercial aircraft. These data are retrieved in real-time, downlinked to the ground, and used in the validated Nowcast of Atmospheric Ionizing Radiation for Aerospace Safety (NAIRAS) modeled radiation environment. The result is improved accuracy of radiation dose and dose rates along flight tracks. In doing so, the ARMAS project has made a significant contribution toward improving U.S. and international aviation safety by laying the groundwork for an automated, reliable operational system that can monitor the natural galactic and solar radiation environment at commercial aviation flight levels.

Doses

 

Accomplishments

The accumulated radiation doses from the flight tests were produced by an operational-grade integrated system that:
1. Acquires dose rate and GPS data on board.
2. Forms Iridium data packets that are sent in real-time.
3. Captures the real-time aircraft and NAIRAS most recent run data on servers at SET.
4. Pre-processes the data for differences from NAIRAS climatology at USU SWC.
5. Stores those results in an operational database.
6. Provides those results to NASA LaRC for generating accumulated dose rates over flight paths.
7. Delivery of dose rate jpegs to web sites and smart phones with ~15 minutes latency from original measurement.